The handling of articles frequently involves providing individual or a plurality of articles with an outer packaging.
In the case of individual articles, this is carried out for their improved protection and/or for their improved sales presentation.
In the case of a plurality of articles, a bundle of a plurality of articles is additionally achieved by the outer packaging.
Bundles represent an effective way of enabling simultaneous handling of a plurality of articles, for instance, for facilitating the transport of a plurality of articles at the same time. For many articles, such as beverage containers, for example, bundles of a plurality of articles held together thus represent the most frequent type of sales units.
The articles can be, for instance, objects, such as, for example, packaged or unpackaged objects, containers, such as beverage bottles or cans, or in themselves bundles, in turn, of a plurality of objects, in which the objects of a bundle can be held together, for instance, by means of an embracing around the periphery of a group of objects, such as, for instance, a strapping, a wrapping, a shrink tube, or an outer packaging, such as a cardboard packaging or a carrying rack, for instance, a beverage crate, to name but a few conceivable embodiments.
For instance, cardboard boxes or beverage crates, to name but a few conceivable embodiments, are used as outer packaging respectively accommodating one or more articles, because they offer a high, and, as the case may be, additional protection for the articles accommodated therein, because they are in addition stackable together with the articles accommodated therein, and because they moreover enable identifying the articles accommodated therein by means of information printed or glued onto their outside. They can further serve as advertising media by the corresponding information on their outside.
Outer packaging can be designed with or without compartments, also termed so-called baskets, arranged or arrangeable therein for separating and/or keeping apart individual articles from each other.
So-called interior fittings to be arranged or being arranged in an outer packaging, which interior fittings can consist, for instance, of dividers slotted into each other and/or connected with each other, for instance, by bending edges and/or adhesive joints, are termed compartments.
The dividers can consist of cardboard and/or paperboard or plastics, for instance. For instance, corrugated cardboard can be used for the dividers to protect sensitive articles. The dividers are connected with each other such that compartments are produced with, for example, a rectangular or a triangular or a polyangular base, provided for respectively one or more articles, which are fastened against shifting in the compartments.
To summarize, compartments assign fixed positions to the articles within the outer packaging and thus protect them, during the further transport and/or during the storage of the outer packaging accommodating these articles until the articles are withdrawn and consumed, for instance, from colliding with each other and rubbing against each other, which otherwise would lead to a negative impression of the quality by scuffing, for instance, of information applied onto the articles in the form of labels, for example, and/or by the articles damaging each other.
So-called blind compartments or blind cells can be realized at the outer edge of a set of compartments, which can be formed, for example, to be too small for the reception of articles. Blind compartments or blind cells at the periphery of a set of compartments inserted into an outer packaging or arranged in an outer packaging afford a further protection of articles accommodated in the outer packaging, for example in the instance of mechanical stress and/or deformation of article-accommodating outer packaging.
In handling articles, for instance, in food technology and/or beverage technology and/or packaging technology and/or in the food industry and/or beverage industry and/or packaging industry, pacing, i.e. being able to handle as many articles as possible within an as short as possible time span, represents a significant cost factor. The faster the pacing, the higher is the article throughput, and the better is thus the utilization of the machines, facilities, and devices intended for this purpose. Pacing can thus be described as the ratio of the number of articles to the period of time within which this number of articles is handled.
In order to be able to achieve high pacings, fully automatic devices, also called transplacing machines or, termed for short transplacers, are used in the packaging technology and in the packaging industry for transferring articles, which transplacers, in connection with the staging of outer packaging, continuously or discontinuously remove the article or the articles respectively to be transferred into an outer packaging within fractions of seconds from an infeed of articles being transported by means of, for instance, one or more conveyors in, for instance, one or more article flows of continuous, immediately consecutive articles or articles that are already grouped according to their number and/or already spaced apart from one another according to their later arrangement in the outer packaging, and transfer them into the outer packaging.
In order to further increase the achievable pacing, the aim is to provide as many articles simultaneously as possible with outer packaging. For this purpose, as many articles as can be simultaneously placed into supplied outer packaging are taken simultaneously from one or more article flows.
A transplacer has a gripping device, for this purpose, with a so-called gripper head, termed gripper for short, per article to be simultaneously transferred into an outer packaging. The gripper head, coming from above, seizes an article with a gripping force at least sufficient to lift the article. In this context, each article to be seized from the infeed must be seized as precisely as possible in order to exclude disturbances in the seizing and standstill periods resulting therefrom.
It is obvious that such transplacers are highly complex and thus expensive, making standstill periods, for instance, due to a change of the format of outer packaging and/or articles particularly excruciating.
In addition, the space requirement for the construction of the equipment technology is another not insubstantial cost factor in handling articles. The greatest cost factor in this context is the required floor space, because most of the facilities do not fully use the ceiling height commonly available in production halls.
One object in developing apparatuses for handling articles comprising at least one or more transplacers as well as methods carried out in transferring articles into one or more outer packagings corresponding to the apparatuses, is therefore to keep standstill periods as short as possible, without, however, negatively affecting the pacing.
An apparatus for supplying articles to a continuously operating packaging machine is known from DE 42 04 993. The apparatus comprises a plurality of gripping heads, which are respectively hinged rotationally driven to a lever. A conveyor belt guides articles in direction toward the respective gripping heads. The articles in this instance are arranged in rows, are brought to a halt by a stop means at the end of the conveyor belt, and are received by one of the gripping heads. After the reception, the stop means is lowered. Further articles advance, while the already received articles are placed into corresponding crates via the gripper head and subsequently discharged. The further articles, which have advanced in the meantime, can be received by a further gripping head and disposed in a further, following crate.
It has been shown for such apparatuses as are known from the prior art that the expected desired position not always coincides with the effective actual position when the respective articles are being received from the conveyor belt. This can particularly be the case if the respective articles are containers designed as PET bottles, for instance, which tend to dimensional instability. Inaccuracies in transferring the respective articles onto the conveyor belt can also occur so that the effective actual position of the articles is only approximately known.
If deviations from the expected desired position occur, the respective gripping devices for receiving the respective articles can collide with the articles and the articles can thus not be received by the gripping devices. This can result in damages to the respective gripping device. In order to correct this error, an interruption of the process can also be necessary, thus leading to delays in the article production and to a lower throughput along with a dramatic decrease of the pacing as seen over a longer period of time.